Launchers have been designed and used to accelerate projectiles (such as plates, discs or flyers) at high velocities (from about 0.5 km/s to 2 km/s) and hypervelocities (from about 2 km/s to 9.5 km/s) using high explosives. Launchers of this type have been used in equation of state (EOS) research in order to achieve high pressure and high internal energy states, for example.